Nathan Lachenmyer is a partner at Sitara Systems, a technology and design studio that works with museums and artists to create contemporary immersive experiences. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied human-computer interaction, and has worked with a wide range of brands, museums, and artists, for instance, Target, Samsung, the Nobel Peace Center, Tate Modern, Cirque Du Soleil and more, to develop innovative immersive and interactive experiences.
In 2021, Sitara Systems worked with conceptual artist Anicka Yi to create In Love With The World, an award-winning and critically acclaimed public artwork that premiered at Tate Modern. This created a living ecosystem of machines that ran fully autonomously, without human intervention, for three months. The project aimed to ask a simple question – what would the world be like if we lived with machines in a way that more closely resembled nature than man-made objects? It went on to explore this question by introducing museum visitors to immerse themselves in speculative fiction where machines were autonomous biomimetic objects.
This exhibition provided unprecedented interaction with robots in public space, with no walls, safety nets, or fences separating them from the machines. It won a Global Design Award from SEGD, the Society of Experiential Graphic Designers, and was finallist in Fast Company’s Innovation By Design Awards, in both the Experience Design and Experimental Design categories.
SEGD said: “This installation is very interactive with the public and pushes the idea of what is considered to be a public installation…The biomimicry used within the fabrication of these creatures is of the highest order.”
Lachenmyer is currently focusing on working with history museums in their plans to commission immersive artworks for the upcoming United States Semiquincentennial. He is also working with natural history museums to communicate issues such as climate change.